When you run Sitecore 6.x in Integrated Pipeline Mode, You will notice that ALL IIS log entries contain the log entry for the resquest to the layout (aspx) page (instead of the actual sitecore item .e.g /ContactUs.aspx).

If you run Sitecore in Classic Mode, the problem disappears. However, if you still wish to use Integrated Pipeline Mode, you will have to intercept the request before the Sitecore HttpModule (Sitecore.Nexus.dll) gets involved.

Solution

Create a class that extends System.Web.IHttpModule and set the path back to the original value after the request has been processed but before the IIS logging module writes the log entry.

I remember, back in the days when I was using Sitecore 6 in Page Edit mode, an blue arrow would highlight the placeholders on the page when I would hover the placeholder name in the in Design Pane.

Now that I'm using Sitecore 6.3, I've realised that this was no longer the case. The only thing that happens is the description of the placeholder (new cool thing !) is displayed at the bottom of the page.

After spending several hours with IE Developer Toolbar (yes..IE Developer Toolbar !!!.. I couldn't use Firefox/Firebug because the Design Mode is not currently supported in Firefox), it finally came down to this :

To make life easier (allegedly) and boost the performance (again...allegedly), all icon files for Sitecore (initially in Directory (sitecore\shell\Themes\Standard) have been zipped up and automatically extracted on the fly when you select an icon from the Icon Choose Screen.. Well that's a good thing..BUT...

The webedit.css (which, I hear you say, is responsible for styling the injected spans that the Page Editor introduces) still references icons/files in the "Themes\Standard" folder.

Result:

Well, since those files are now zipped up, they will no longer be available and thus won't appear on Page Edit Mode.

Workaround:

There are about 10 url references (e.g background:url (/sitecore/shell/themes/standard/Applications/32x32/arrow_right_blue.png) in the webedit.css. Extract the required icons from their respective zipped archives, and change the background url references accordingly

Once this is done, everything was back to normal and we were all happy again.. What a day !! :)

I wanted to set the QueryStringField property of the DataPager dynamically. By default, if you do not specify this property, the pager works on a Postback Model.

On the other hand, if you do set the QueryStringField to something, it'll use the value that you set the QueryStringField to as a query string parameter and assign it the appropriate page number (IOW, it makes use of a query string parameter to change the page view)

So far...So good..

Using the above example, since we've set the property in the code behind, we'd expect the pager to use a query string to drive the page view. Commenting the line out forces the pager to use a postback model.

What about .Net 4?

the above situations work when the project is set up to run in .NET 3.5 . However, this solution does not seem to work with .NET 4.0 at all. If we set the Target Framework to 4.0, the paging does not work if we want to force a QueryStringField at runtime :(

Getting Lucene to index pdf document is a doddle, thanks to the document published on SDN. if you follow the instructions to the letter, you will be able to make Lucene index pdf documents in no time

HOWEVER, please be aware that you have to properly dispose the objects (to name a few... PDDocument and Ikvm.io.InputStreamWrapper objects) after you parsed the document(s).

If you forget to do so, you will soon notice that your temp folder (c:\windows\temp) will be filled with pdfbox temp files (e.g pdfbox124bb19809ftmp). In the worst case scenario, the C drive runs out of disk space => no website.

and Windows 7 was MY IDEA !!!

I once inherited a sublayout that inlcuded an asp:xml control. The asp:xml control was there to handle and display an xml feed from another system, while the rest of the sublayout concentrated on rendering related feed content from Sitecore. The presentation of the xml feed was handled via an xlst rendering.

In this particular situation, I made use use of XSL extensions in the XSLT file. Registering the XSL Extension was fairly easy.

This article will focus on the implementation of the AjaxControlToolkit's AutoCompleteExtender into a simple ASP.NET application. What I'm trying to do here is pull the data from a database and use the AutoCompleteExtender to display the data as the user types characters in a textbox.

Server Implementation

Im not going to focus on how to retrieve the data (from a table of around 60,000 records). I'm going to use the simplistic SQLConnection/SQLCommand/SQLDataReader classes and passing sql command as plain text (as opposed to Stored Procedures). The key issue is how and what is the best way to store the data once being retrieved. Generally, Autocomplete comes in 2 flavours:-

1: Find words based on letters anywhere in a phrase (performing a LIKE '%ar%' in SQL).

2: Find words that start with specific characters ( LIKE 'ar%' in SQL).

In the first instance, you're pretty much tied up to using the LIKE clause (be it in a stored proc or simple text). The determining factor here is how and when to cache the data since each character typed in invokes the webservice and queries the database. Each query will yield a different result set.

In the second instance(the focus of this article), the more you add characters to the keyword, you are, in fact, narrowing down the scope of search. This means that the data we initially load is deterministic and hence we can cache it somewhere. But the real deal here is :which data structure do we hold our words in? List<>, DataTable, Linked List??

Trie

You might have already figured this one out. Anyway, a trie is an ordered tree data structure (a.k.a prefix tree) that stores the information about the contents of each node in the path from the root to the node, rather than the node itself. What this means is that each part between the root and any leaf represents a key and the goal is to find the key by traversing the tree.

Setting up the AutoCompleteExtender was easy. To get the autocomplete working, I only had to modify a few of the extender's attributes (.e.g. CompletionSetCount, TargetControlID, ServicePath, ServiceMethod, DelimiterCharacters ..) and data was being returned as I typed in characters. However, making the extender look good was a different story.

Client-Side Implementation

This is the bit where I'm open to suggestions. I'm no Javascript/JQuery expert but however, I finally got the extender working as I wanted it to. Characters relevant to the ones the user has typed become highlighted in the drop down list. It took me a while to dig this solution out. The javascript is awkward and needs to be refactored. Netherless, the solution works for IE and Firefox [ good enough for me :) ]

A test Sitecore Application .. I will be using the Sitecore Starter Kit [Sitecore Starter Kit 6.0.0 rev.090203] as an my starting point. (installed on IIS 7).

Before I start on implementing the solution, a little bit of background info would, I guess, be quite useful.

AddAspxExtension in LinkManager

A potential solution is to change the value of AddAspxExtension from true (by default) to false. If you do change it to false, you will have to create a wildcard script map to the ASP.NET runtime. This causes IIS to intercept every request made against the web server. This includes requests for images, asp.net pages and HTML pages. Therefore, enabling a wildcard script map to ASP.NET does have performance implications. If you wish to find another way to use pages without .aspx extensions in Sitecore, please read further....

Sitecore Aliases

Aliases, in a nutshell, allow you to shorten the url of an item. For example, if your item is currently accessible via http://hostname/MyParentItem/MyChildItem.aspx, you can specify an alias of myChildItem, which will be a placeholder for the actual item as it is in the Sitecore tree. Hence, the url of the alias is http://hostname/MyChildItem.aspx. For SEO purposes, this allows us to surface items from deep down in the hierarchy right up to the site root.

Note:

Aliases do not work if you remove the .aspx extension

No matter how far your items are in the sitecore tree, an alias allows you to refer to it from the site root.

Step 1: Install and Configure Helicon ISAPI Rewrite Lite

Start by installing Helicon ISAPI Rewrite. This process is fairly straightforward. Since we are using the lite version, our Regex entries will be placed in the global http.conf (located in the Lite version installation folder). The entries in my httpd.conf are as follow:-

Url Rewriting Rationale

Before a request is forwarded to Sitecore, the ISAPI module intercepts it.

Line 1: You NEED that ! This turns on the Helicon ISAPI Module

Line 2: Errr...This is self-explanatory..

Line 3: We don't need to chop off the .aspx when we are in Sitecore CMS. For this reason, we're basically telling the module to not do anything when a request has "sitecore" in it.

Line 4: This is the most important bit. This appends .aspx (and querystrings,if any) to requests and consequently forwards the resulting request to Sitecore. Two scenarios arise as a result of this.

3.1 : Sitecore maps the request to an item in the database. The page gets displayed in the end.

3.2 : Sitecore cannot find the item based on the url. You will either end up with the Sitecore's "Item Not Found" page.

NB:

Before we go any further, I need to confess that I did modify the Starter Kit a little prior to this operation. Basically, when you load the starter kit, you are greeted with a dummy home Site, that has a nice layout and there is a link to the Actual Starter Site. I was tired of this as my home page, So, I changed the value of "startItem" [in the Sites Definition of website (in web.config)] from "/home" to "/Sample". In that way, when i hit the website, I will eventually land on the real starter site!. Also, by doing so, all my urls within the website will no longer contain "/sitecore/content/.." since the Start Item has changed.

It looks like we have a half-baked solution. Aliases will now work without the .aspx extension as well. The other bits that need to be considered are

1 : How to make sitecore controls (.e.g. sc:link etc..) aware that they should drop the ".aspx" extensions

2 : How does it all tie up together with .NET (user controls etc..)

Step 2: XSL Extensions (revised)

To follow up on custom solution, you will need to tell Sitecore to remove the ".aspx" when it renders urls (either via sc:link [xsl extensions] or c# code). For XSL Extensions, we need to disable the default implementation that Sitecore provides us with and roll out our own. Fortunately, it's very easy to do so. [Credits : Chris Wojciech ]

NEARLY THERE!!!. All the links (that are rendering using sc:link) have now lost the .aspx extensions on the front end.

Step 3 : Sitecore and .NET interaction (with Url Rewriting)

If you have a Sitecore solution built using XSLT renderings only (highly unlikely though..), you're kinda safe here. However, if you have usercontrols (that host controls that can cause a postback) as well (for argument's sake, a contact us form), you end up with one issue.

Let's create a Contact Us form and add it to the presentation of the Contact Us item in Sitecore